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Archive: December 2007

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Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Absinthe and Motherfuckerless Brooklyn

Due to the time-dilation effects of continuously crossing south on Houston and north on Fourteenth in the same day, I have only aged four years since beginning this blog in September 2003, but New York City itself has aged an entire generation.

New York is a city of constant change, and inevitably some change is for the worse. If you take a values-neutral stance, that is. If you are somehow biased against middle-class suburbanites who believe they’re pretty cool, then you will find more of the change to be negative.

One thing I’d like to make clear: if you have moved to Brooklyn, that’s fine. But it is not a heroic achievement.

People have been living in Brooklyn since time began in 1898. It doesn’t make you hardcore to move to a condo there today. It doesn’t make you edgy or interesting to have bought some square-footage. It doesn’t mean you are part of a new club or family or heritage or history. And — and I think is key — can you truly be proud of Brooklyn when the previous residents of Brooklyn are not proud of you?

Despite my relativistic commute, I am not immune to the effects of time. I can see what is happening all around me. White people march ever onward, fulfilling their destiny by checking off boxes on the to-do list of life. I know I have entered a Dark Age in which my female contemporaries are all married and happy, but I know within a few years there will be a Renaissance of infidelity and misery. That is of some comfort.

It may be the case that many of my acquaintances are taking a page from Hillary and Bill Clinton (or, as they are known in the publishing world, Hill and Wang) because they are carpetbagging professionals involved in marriages of convenience. But, again, marriage is a checkbox, and checkboxes don’t have nuance. That makes sense if you believe you have to fill in all the squares as quick as you can, so that on your deathbed your last word can be “Bingo”.

One notable change in the last twelvemonth is that absinthe has become available in the United States, and in New York. Now anyone can be as drunk with lyricism as me. You can see why I just don’t feel it much any more. So are there absinthe blogs now?

As Billy Joel said, we’re all living here in Urinetown. Have a happy new year.